AI Rabbit Holes

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Spock
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AI Rabbit Holes

#1 Post by Spock » Tue Apr 18, 2023 6:02 pm

If anybody is interested-a couple recent Lex Fridman podcasts (Long) on AI and the dangers of such. I make no assertions as to the credibility of the guests-you are big boys and girls-but interesting none the less.

Eliezer Yudkowsky believes that there is a 100% probability that AI will wipe out humanity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaTRHFaaPG8&t=11202s

Max Tegmark is a little more optimistic (but not much) but is a major mover behind the call for a 6-month moratorium on AI development.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcVfceTsD0A

The scariest thing that I have run across recently is that the Google guys are moving full speed ahead with no respect for the dangers of AI. They only can see the good stuff.

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Re: AI Rabbit Holes

#2 Post by Spock » Thu Apr 20, 2023 5:27 pm

Test

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Re: AI Rabbit Holes

#3 Post by Beebs52 » Thu Apr 20, 2023 5:35 pm

Larry Page re speciest in talk with Musk 2015. Interesting.
Well, then

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Re: AI Rabbit Holes

#4 Post by Spock » Thu Apr 20, 2023 6:02 pm

Beebs52 wrote:
Thu Apr 20, 2023 5:35 pm
Larry Page re speciest in talk with Musk 2015. Interesting.
I have got a book on AI by Eric Schmidt (also of Google) and Kissinger and maybe another guy that I bought a couple of months ago-I haven't got to it yet. I suspect it will be a cheerleader for AI but i can always be surprised.

Look up the well-known "Paperclip" problem to see how even a simple AI designed to make paperclips might wipe out humanity.

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Re: AI Rabbit Holes

#5 Post by Spock » Fri Apr 21, 2023 7:07 pm

A fresh (and shorter-about 1 hour) deal with Eliezer Yudkowsky.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_YX6AgxxYw

Apparently, he gave a very well-received TED Talk just the other day on this topic-but I haven't found it yet.

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Re: AI Rabbit Holes

#6 Post by themanintheseersuckersuit » Sat Apr 22, 2023 2:59 pm

If your are not having enough trouble sleeping https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robopocalypse starts with mutiny by self driving cars
Suitguy is not bitter.

feels he represents the many educated and rational onlookers who believe that the hysterical denouncement of lay scepticism is both unwarranted and counter-productive

The problem, then, is that such calls do not address an opposition audience so much as they signal virtue. They talk past those who need convincing. They ignore actual facts and counterargument. And they are irreparably smug.

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Re: AI Rabbit Holes

#7 Post by Beebs52 » Sat Apr 22, 2023 3:26 pm

themanintheseersuckersuit wrote:
Sat Apr 22, 2023 2:59 pm
If your are not having enough trouble sleeping https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robopocalypse starts with mutiny by self driving cars
I read this a year or so ago. There's another. Was telling Jeff it's sorta presiently creepy.
Well, then

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Re: AI Rabbit Holes

#8 Post by Spock » Sat Apr 22, 2023 4:21 pm

All indications from the AI safety crowd is that humanity has already lost the first big battle (and maybe the most important one) against Artificial Intelligence when we hooked it up to the Internet.

All AI's should be air-gapped away from the internet-but that battle has been lost right away.

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Re: AI Rabbit Holes

#9 Post by jarnon » Tue May 02, 2023 1:27 pm

Concern about AI has expanded beyond activists, and is being expressed by experts from tech companies, government and academia. They're worried about misuse of AI today, and the future risk to the whole of humanity.

'Godfather of AI' leaves Google, warns of tech's dangers
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Re: AI Rabbit Holes

#10 Post by Beebs52 » Tue May 02, 2023 2:33 pm

So here're my questions. AI requires human input initially. Doesn't that input require ethical, subjective, right/wrong algorithms, biased algorithms, etc? In other words something would initially propel a machine on a path. Not sure how to ask the question. Aren't some of the current biases, left/right/dark web exhibited by many sites seminal AI creepiness? And I'm not talking politics, just mechanics.
Well, then

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Re: AI Rabbit Holes

#11 Post by jarnon » Tue May 02, 2023 2:55 pm

Beebs52 wrote:
Tue May 02, 2023 2:33 pm
So here're my questions. AI requires human input initially. Doesn't that input require ethical, subjective, right/wrong algorithms, biased algorithms, etc? In other words something would initially propel a machine on a path. Not sure how to ask the question. Aren't some of the current biases, left/right/dark web exhibited by many sites seminal AI creepiness? And I'm not talking politics, just mechanics.
Sometimes the bias is inadvertent. Several early facial recognition algorithms couldn't distinguish a Black man from a monkey. Clearly that wasn't the designers' intent. They had used a photo library with almost all white faces. Of course, if the designers are malicious, the AI has no inherent ethics to counter them.
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Re: AI Rabbit Holes

#12 Post by Beebs52 » Tue May 02, 2023 7:29 pm

I guess that's my point. Sentience how? Only via initial input.
Well, then

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Re: AI Rabbit Holes

#13 Post by Bob Juch » Tue May 02, 2023 7:36 pm

IBM has a hiring freeze while they figure out which jobs can be replaced by AI.
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Re: AI Rabbit Holes

#14 Post by Beebs52 » Tue May 02, 2023 7:42 pm

Bob Juch wrote:
Tue May 02, 2023 7:36 pm
IBM has a hiring freeze while they figure out which jobs can be replaced by AI.
Do you think this would be more a manufacturing thing? Or...
Well, then

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Re: AI Rabbit Holes

#15 Post by Bob Juch » Tue May 02, 2023 11:04 pm

Beebs52 wrote:
Tue May 02, 2023 7:42 pm
Bob Juch wrote:
Tue May 02, 2023 7:36 pm
IBM has a hiring freeze while they figure out which jobs can be replaced by AI.
Do you think this would be more a manufacturing thing? Or...
It could be back-office stuff or software, or...

ChatGPT can write basic programs in many different languages.
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
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Si fractum non sit, noli id reficere.

Teach a child to be polite and courteous in the home and, when he grows up, he'll never be able to drive in New Jersey.

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Re: AI Rabbit Holes

#16 Post by tlynn78 » Thu May 04, 2023 9:13 pm

We can all rest easy re: AI. Our Border Tsar has been put in charge of its oversight. What could possibly go wrong?
To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead. -Thomas Paine
You can ignore reality, but you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality. -Ayn Rand
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire

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Re: AI Rabbit Holes

#17 Post by jarnon » Fri May 05, 2023 8:06 am

tlynn78 wrote:
Thu May 04, 2023 9:13 pm
We can all rest easy re: AI. Our Border Tsar has been put in charge of its oversight. What could possibly go wrong?
More details about Tsar VP Harris and the AI menace:
Biden, Harris meet with CEOs about AI risks

Pull quote >>> There is also an independent commitment by top AI developers to participate in a public evaluation of their systems in August at the Las Vegas hacker convention DEF CON. <<<

Not a reassuring name!
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Re: AI Rabbit Holes

#18 Post by jarnon » Wed Jun 07, 2023 9:59 am

I found this essay more thoughtful and and nuanced, thus scarier, than fantasies about AI obliterating the human race.
The Economist wrote:Yuval Noah Harari argues that AI has hacked the operating system of human civilisation
Storytelling computers will change the course of human history, says the historian and philosopher
Spoiler
Fears of artificial intelligence (AI) have haunted humanity since the very beginning of the computer age. Hitherto these fears focused on machines using physical means to kill, enslave or replace people. But over the past couple of years new AI tools have emerged that threaten the survival of human civilisation from an unexpected direction. AI has gained some remarkable abilities to manipulate and generate language, whether with words, sounds or images. AI has thereby hacked the operating system of our civilisation.

Language is the stuff almost all human culture is made of. Human rights, for example, aren’t inscribed in our DNA. Rather, they are cultural artefacts we created by telling stories and writing laws. Gods aren’t physical realities. Rather, they are cultural artefacts we created by inventing myths and writing scriptures.

Money, too, is a cultural artefact. Banknotes are just colourful pieces of paper, and at present more than 90% of money is not even banknotes—it is just digital information in computers. What gives money value is the stories that bankers, finance ministers and cryptocurrency gurus tell us about it. Sam Bankman-Fried, Elizabeth Holmes and Bernie Madoff were not particularly good at creating real value, but they were all extremely capable storytellers.

What would happen once a non-human intelligence becomes better than the average human at telling stories, composing melodies, drawing images, and writing laws and scriptures? When people think about ChatGPT and other new AI tools, they are often drawn to examples like school children using AI to write their essays. What will happen to the school system when kids do that? But this kind of question misses the big picture. Forget about school essays. Think of the next American presidential race in 2024, and try to imagine the impact of AI tools that can be made to mass-produce political content, fake-news stories and scriptures for new cults.

In recent years the QAnon cult has coalesced around anonymous online messages, known as “Q drops”. Followers collected, revered and interpreted these Q drops as a sacred text. While to the best of our knowledge all previous Q drops were composed by humans, and bots merely helped disseminate them, in future we might see the first cults in history whose revered texts were written by a non-human intelligence. Religions throughout history have claimed a non-human source for their holy books. Soon that might be a reality.

On a more prosaic level, we might soon find ourselves conducting lengthy online discussions about abortion, climate change or the Russian invasion of Ukraine with entities that we think are humans—but are actually AI. The catch is that it is utterly pointless for us to spend time trying to change the declared opinions of an AI bot, while the AI could hone its messages so precisely that it stands a good chance of influencing us.

Through its mastery of language, AI could even form intimate relationships with people, and use the power of intimacy to change our opinions and worldviews. Although there is no indication that AI has any consciousness or feelings of its own, to foster fake intimacy with humans it is enough if the AI can make them feel emotionally attached to it. In June 2022 Blake Lemoine, a Google engineer, publicly claimed that the AI chatbot LaMDA, on which he was working, had become sentient. The controversial claim cost him his job. The most interesting thing about this episode was not Mr Lemoine’s claim, which was probably false. Rather, it was his willingness to risk his lucrative job for the sake of the AI chatbot. If AI can influence people to risk their jobs for it, what else could it induce them to do?

In a political battle for minds and hearts, intimacy is the most efficient weapon, and AI has just gained the ability to mass-produce intimate relationships with millions of people. We all know that over the past decade social media has become a battleground for controlling human attention. With the new generation of AI, the battlefront is shifting from attention to intimacy. What will happen to human society and human psychology as AI fights AI in a battle to fake intimate relationships with us, which can then be used to convince us to vote for particular politicians or buy particular products?

Even without creating “fake intimacy”, the new AI tools would have an immense influence on our opinions and worldviews. People may come to use a single AI adviser as a one-stop, all-knowing oracle. No wonder Google is terrified. Why bother searching, when I can just ask the oracle? The news and advertising industries should also be terrified. Why read a newspaper when I can just ask the oracle to tell me the latest news? And what’s the purpose of advertisements, when I can just ask the oracle to tell me what to buy?

And even these scenarios don’t really capture the big picture. What we are talking about is potentially the end of human history. Not the end of history, just the end of its human-dominated part. History is the interaction between biology and culture; between our biological needs and desires for things like food and sex, and our cultural creations like religions and laws. History is the process through which laws and religions shape food and sex.

What will happen to the course of history when AI takes over culture, and begins producing stories, melodies, laws and religions? Previous tools like the printing press and radio helped spread the cultural ideas of humans, but they never created new cultural ideas of their own. AI is fundamentally different. AI can create completely new ideas, completely new culture.

At first, AI will probably imitate the human prototypes that it was trained on in its infancy. But with each passing year, AI culture will boldly go where no human has gone before. For millennia human beings have lived inside the dreams of other humans. In the coming decades we might find ourselves living inside the dreams of an alien intelligence.

Fear of AI has haunted humankind for only the past few decades. But for thousands of years humans have been haunted by a much deeper fear. We have always appreciated the power of stories and images to manipulate our minds and to create illusions. Consequently, since ancient times humans have feared being trapped in a world of illusions.

In the 17th century René Descartes feared that perhaps a malicious demon was trapping him inside a world of illusions, creating everything he saw and heard. In ancient Greece Plato told the famous Allegory of the Cave, in which a group of people are chained inside a cave all their lives, facing a blank wall. A screen. On that screen they see projected various shadows. The prisoners mistake the illusions they see there for reality.

In ancient India Buddhist and Hindu sages pointed out that all humans lived trapped inside Maya—the world of illusions. What we normally take to be reality is often just fictions in our own minds. People may wage entire wars, killing others and willing to be killed themselves, because of their belief in this or that illusion.

The AI revolution is bringing us face to face with Descartes’ demon, with Plato’s cave, with the Maya. If we are not careful, we might be trapped behind a curtain of illusions, which we could not tear away—or even realise is there.

Of course, the new power of AI could be used for good purposes as well. I won’t dwell on this, because the people who develop AI talk about it enough. The job of historians and philosophers like myself is to point out the dangers. But certainly, AI can help us in countless ways, from finding new cures for cancer to discovering solutions to the ecological crisis. The question we face is how to make sure the new AI tools are used for good rather than for ill. To do that, we first need to appreciate the true capabilities of these tools.

Since 1945 we have known that nuclear technology could generate cheap energy for the benefit of humans—but could also physically destroy human civilisation. We therefore reshaped the entire international order to protect humanity, and to make sure nuclear technology was used primarily for good. We now have to grapple with a new weapon of mass destruction that can annihilate our mental and social world.

We can still regulate the new AI tools, but we must act quickly. Whereas nukes cannot invent more powerful nukes, AI can make exponentially more powerful AI. The first crucial step is to demand rigorous safety checks before powerful AI tools are released into the public domain. Just as a pharmaceutical company cannot release new drugs before testing both their short-term and long-term side-effects, so tech companies shouldn’t release new AI tools before they are made safe. We need an equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration for new technology, and we need it yesterday.

Won’t slowing down public deployments of AI cause democracies to lag behind more ruthless authoritarian regimes? Just the opposite. Unregulated AI deployments would create social chaos, which would benefit autocrats and ruin democracies. Democracy is a conversation, and conversations rely on language. When AI hacks language, it could destroy our ability to have meaningful conversations, thereby destroying democracy.

We have just encountered an alien intelligence, here on Earth. We don’t know much about it, except that it might destroy our civilisation. We should put a halt to the irresponsible deployment of AI tools in the public sphere, and regulate AI before it regulates us. And the first regulation I would suggest is to make it mandatory for AI to disclose that it is an AI. If I am having a conversation with someone, and I cannot tell whether it is a human or an AI—that’s the end of democracy.

This text has been generated by a human.

Or has it?
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Re: AI Rabbit Holes

#19 Post by Spock » Wed Jun 07, 2023 12:24 pm

Jarnon>>>"I found this essay more thoughtful and and nuanced, thus scarier, than fantasies about AI obliterating the human race."<<<

Re-Harari-

Yeah, I saw the Harari stuff too.

I trust Harari about as far as I can throw him. He is a big World Economic Forum/Transhumanist guy.

There have been a couple of ex-Google AI guys coming out recently including this one from a guy who got scared about what it is doing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk-nQ7HF6k4

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Re: AI Rabbit Holes

#20 Post by jarnon » Mon Jul 03, 2023 7:05 pm

UN council to hold first meeting on potential threats of artificial intelligence to global peace
Antonio Guterres wrote:These scientists and experts have called on the world to act, declaring AI an existential threat to humanity on a par with the risk of nuclear war.
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